ironmuffin wrote:
Whats something triathlon needs??
Supplement, Nutrition, Gear, More coaches, Another Taren, etc....
Supplements, well the bodybuilding supp store has everything there. Most tri specific supps have a significantly smaller market and taste nasty. (I've started throwing out the sample I get)
Nutrition, the current gels on the market do it for me. But then you have the weirdos that eat potatoes or saran wrap banana bread to their top tube. Wouldn't mind a Gatorade Endurance ZERO since I tend to push towards gels for carbs.
On Taren, he's continued to be a snake oil salesmen. If anything Triathlon needs less of them. There's tons of snake oil salesmen trying to hawk their products to triathletes...and even pro triathletes as ambassadors for literal snake oil companies.
PHX has a decent Sprint and Olympic scene, I wish it had more Olympic distance races, maybe we have enough, idk. But I do think it could be better. There's clearly a few cities in the area that support the sport well and permits continue to be approved. I feel like the East side of the Maricopa Basin is losing sprints though.
On Clubs, under the previous way USAT classified clubs there were a few clubs here that had no membership dues. Tri Scottsdale, the largest club in Arizona didn't have a membership dues structure. I know that you can still participate in training sessions without being a "paid member" still though which is great.
I think one of the largest barriers to entry in the sport isn't the bike itself, I rode my first two tris on a borrowed mountain bike, I know people who decided to do tris on rentals here. They did all their "cycling" on spin bikes at the gym. One of the largest barriers out there is swimming. The amount of adults of all races that never learned to swim as kids is rather high, I think it's even higher than it used to be. Interestingly, where I went to college we had to take a semester long swim class for Phys Ed Requirements. And then there's people that did learn how to swim but haven't in years. I never swam competitively ever, but I did do swim lessons when I was a small child at the community pool. I would say that I only did laps for exercise...wow this dates me: 3rd grade I had this idea to swim in the pool in our complex. Then summer of my senior year in college for some reason, and then when I started Triathlon at 26. Then you have un-ass yourself and get to the pool, for me that's pretty easy because it's a 15 minute drive, but for most it's more than that. Then add that most city pools out there actually aren't open during the year for lap swimming.
The biggest hindrance to this sport's growth is folks motivation to train for it, specifically with the pool.
Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.